Obama, Bain, Romney, and Booker: Not a Law Firm, a Scandal

President Obama’s new anti–Mitt Romney attack ad focuses on the former Massachusetts governor’s lucrative tenure at Bain Capital, specifically his decision to shutter a Marion, Indiana, office-supply plant in 1994. Six-minute story short: 350 workers lost their jobs, and a handful of said workers appear in the video to describe their termination and its aftermath.

The aftermath of the video’s release is interesting, too: Team Romney has already issued a statement condemning the content of the ad, likely drawing much more attention to the video that it would have otherwise received. Per Romney flack Andrea Saul: “President Obama continues his assault on the free enterprise system with attacks that one of his supporters, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, called ‘nauseating.’” What Booker actually said on Sunday’s Meet the Press was, “This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides . . . Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop.” Spoiler alert: it will not—but Booker’s off-message response will!

The Newark mayor addressed his remarks in a follow-up YouTube clarification (re: apology) yesterday evening. “I believe President Barack Obama has done such a strong job as leader of our nation, that he more than deserves re-election . . . I used the word ‘nauseating’ on Meet the Press because that’s really how I feel when I see people in my city struggling with real issues and still feeling the challenges of this economy.” He added: “Let me be clear. Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign. He’s talked about himself as a job creator. And therefore it is reasonable—and in fact I encourage it—for the Obama campaign to examine that record and discuss it. I have no problem with that.”

And so concludes 2012’s marquee bit of campaigning least likely to impact anyone’s vote in either direction.